


The Corn COBB 🌽

by sconelover, Unenthusiastic_mermaid



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: All-terrain Hayride, Apple Bobbing, Blood Pops, But so much worse, Carry On Big Bang But Fake, Collaboration, Corn goblins, Crack, Even more corn?, F/M, Fictober 2020, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Go Cornhuskers!, Goblins, Gooey Butter Cake, Halloween Costumes, M/M, Monster parts, Oh yeah you also have to pretend it's October, Post-Canon, Surprise twist!, The Land of Bonety, Welcome to the Midwest aka Crack Land, corn maze, happy boyfriends, pumpkin patch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27437761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sconelover/pseuds/sconelover, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unenthusiastic_mermaid/pseuds/Unenthusiastic_mermaid
Summary: "COBB, you say?" Shepard asks, munching on a raw ear of corn. He peels back the husk and takes another bite like it is a crisp apple. "Yeah, we've got plenty of cobs around here." Flecks of corn kernels are flying everywhere. "Mostly corn cobs."A sweet, wholesome fic about the gang visiting a pumpkin patch... with a twist. Unadulterated crack thrown in like it's a Mad Libs. Tumblr posthere.Enjoy. 🌽
Relationships: Penelope Bunce/Shepard, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 45
Kudos: 75





	1. The Land of Bone-ty

**Author's Note:**

> Not affiliated with Carry On Big Bang (it's probably a disgrace upon the COBB name). Yes affiliated with the month of October, which I realize ended a week ago. Please suspend disbelief accordingly. 
> 
> Check out chapter 2 for the art 👀
> 
> Thanks to [gampyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gampyre) for beta reading! ❤️

****

**Baz**

Penny, Simon and I are sitting at the kitchen table, enjoying our tea, when Shepard rushes into the room. He claps his hands together and begins speaking in a voice far too loud for this hour of the morning. “Alright, team!” he says.

Penny groans and puts her head down on the table. “How many times have I told you not to interrupt tea time like this?”

“I still don’t understand what’s so special about some hot leaf juice–”

“It’s a very important British ritual,” I deadpan. I’m only half joking.

Shepard’s mum appears behind him. Michele has perfect skin the same shade as Shepard’s—seriously, not a wrinkle to be found—and makes a fashion statement of wearing colourful, seasonal scarves in her hair. “Morning, kiddos.”

“Morning,” we chorus. A bit pathetically. (We’re all still half asleep.)

“Breakfast?” she asks. “Well, brunch, actually.”

Alright. I suppose it’s not _that_ early in the morning.

Simon perks up. He’s been staring into his tea blankly and idly stirring while half-leaning into me; the inactivity surely means he’s hungry. “Yes, please.”

Michele laughs at his eagerness. “Coming right up. You like bacon, right, Simon?” She gives him a wink and disappears into the kitchen. (Michele _loves_ Simon.) (Because she’s a mum, and mums love feeding people, and no one eats more than Simon.)

(And he loves her. Because her food is fucking delicious.)

Shepard squeezes himself into the spot next to Penny, and she grumbles but moves over to accommodate him. He slings a casual arm around the back of the bench. “So, I was thinking—”

“Whatever it is, _no,”_ Penny says wearily. “You are not dragging us on another hike to find Sasquatch again. Or to meet the Walgren Lake Monster, or whatever.”

Shepard’s eyes light up. “Now that’s an idea!”

“It was _not_ a suggestion.” She frowns into her tea as Michele reappears with two cups of coffee. 

She sets one down in front of Shepard (if it was up to me, I’d _never_ let the man near coffee) and takes a sip from the other. “Shepard was telling me that his favourite county pumpkin patch opened up today,” she says. “Did you want to take your friends, honey? It could be a fun day out.”

“Ma, we’re not twelve anymore,” Shepard protests, as if he wasn’t just about to suggest the very same thing to us.

“Yeah, and running around the country catching Pokémon is a real adult activity,” she says, turning back to the kitchen. Sarcastically, but somehow lightly as well.

“They’re not Pokémon! They’re cryptids–”

“Spare us,” Penny interrupts.

“What’s a pumpkin patch?” Simon asks.

We all turn to stare at him. “It’s a patch,” I say, “where you pick pumpkins.”

“That’s all?”

“As far as I know…”

Shepard’s got that indignant look on his face again. “That’s _not_ all!”

“Oh, no,” Penny says. 

“It has everything,” he tells Simon, bouncing a little now. “Corn mazes and inflatable slides and live music and Jack-O-Lantern carving… and those things you hit with a hammer…”

“You’re bouncing,” Penny points out flatly. Shepard just grins widely at her. She rolls her eyes, but in a soft way.

Simon looks interested, now, and slightly more awake. “Is there food…?”

“Of course there’s food! All the good American food you can imagine. Corn on the cob and cider and pumpkin pie. And,” Shepard says, in what I think he thinks is a tantalising tone, “gooey butter cake.”

What the fuck is—

Simon’s eyes light up and he nudges me. “We should go.”

I close my eyes. “Why?”

_Because someone took Snow’s three favourite words and put them all in what is apparently a single food item._

“Didn’t you hear butter and cake in the same sentence? C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to a pumpkin patch,” Shepard says.

“Going off your description, I believe none of us have been to… that,” I say.

“God, you poor deprived children,” he says.

Penny raises an eyebrow. “Yes, we were very deprived at our _Magickal_ boarding school.”

Shepard laughs, then shrugs. “Magic is cool and all, but seriously. Did you spend your whole childhoods like, only studying?”

“Pretty much,” Penny says. “Also there was the whole saving the world, Chosen One bit”—she tilts her chin towards Simon—“the whole Chosen One’s dread companion bit”—that would be Penny—“and the whole being pathetically in love with the Chosen One for several years bit. And also being a vampire.” 

“Don’t expose me like that, Bunce,” I say in my most haughty tone, and everyone laughs. Simon kisses my cheek.

Shepard rolls his eyes. “Okay, well, I’m sure you had a great time with all that Hogwarts shit, but you missed out on an important childhood experience!”

“Picking pumpkins?” Penny asks skeptically.

“Not just. All of it! Painting and stupid overpriced games and all-terrain hay rides…”

“I am _not_ going on an… all-terrain hay ride. What even is that?”

“You will,” he says with more confidence than the statement deserves.

Michele materialises again with a platter full of maple-glazed bacon, another bearing paprika-pepper scrambled eggs, and a basket laden with toast. “Order up,” she announces, and sets it all down directly in front of Simon. He beams at her, and she takes a seat across from Shepard at the table. 

Then she pulls four bright orange tickets out of her pocket. “So you’re going, right?”

And that’s how we find ourselves in costumes (or, in Simon’s and my case, releasing some monster parts) and piling into Shepard’s silver truck, trundling down the roads of Omaha, Nebraska.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

This is the best place I’ve ever been. 

It’s _amazing._ There are kids everywhere and groups of teenagers in flannels and Ugg boots, too. The whole place smells like apples and pumpkin spice and bonfire smoke, and there’s a live band playing music. It’s a hazy day, grey clouds above, with the sun peeking out in a few slanting golden rays.

Shepard pulls to a stop in a parking lot where the spots are marked with honest-to-Merlin _hay bales_ and hops out of the truck.

Shep’s dressed as himself, but with a hoe (“I’m a _farmer”_ “You literally wear a flannel every day, how is this any different”) and Penny has (very, very grudgingly) put on one of Shepard’s mum’s flannel shirts over a purple dress. The flannel is purple and green, of course—Baz always says he admires her ‘determination to wear Watford colours long past an acceptable mourning period.’

“Welcome,” Shepard says, “to the Land of Bone-ty pumpkin patch. Best one in western Omaha.”

Penny and I exchange a look. _Bonety…_ I look up at the big sign, which confirms the spelling, and my blood runs cold. I guess for Normals it’s just a spooky pun, but… 

“Are there, uh,” I ask, “Magickal creatures here, by any chance? Goblins?”

Baz raises an eyebrow. “Looking for eye candy as well as Halloween candy, Snow?”

My cheeks flame. “Shut up.” 

I tell Shepard, “A bonety is what the… well, I don’t know, maybe goblins… have on my head. Like a bounty, but worse—”

“Yeah, I get the pun,” he says. “I expected better from goblins, honestly.”

“I didn’t.” I shrug. “They’re fit, but they’re not that smart.”

Baz closes his eyes in exasperation. 

Shepard takes off his big glasses and starts cleaning them with his flannel. “I haven’t seen anything around here except dryads.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Penny says. “It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“What the fuck could they want with me, anyway?” I say. “I’m a Normal now.” 

My wings flap like they disagree with me. 

“You’re not,” Baz says, automatically.

“I _know,_ I mean.” I try to tuck my wings flat against my back.

“I don’t think they wanted you for your magic,” Penny pipes up. “They just wanted vengeance, right?”

“Guys, chill,” Shepard says. He glances behind us, at the pumpkin patch. “This is a wholesome family establishment. At least during the day. And even if there were goblins, isn’t it only the British goblins that are after you?”

“If they can drive cabs, they definitely have international communication,” I insist.

“Well,” he says carefully, “I can at least assure you there aren’t any of _your_ kinds of goblins here. The kind that look like pop stars.”

“What a shame,” Baz says loftily. 

I elbow him. He tweaks the plastic devil horns Shep made me wear.

We walk towards the entrance, a big inflatable archway made of inflatable skulls. 

“Where’re the pumpkins?” I ask, looking around. It smells incredible. Down a main walkway, I see everything _but_ pumpkins. Stalls and tents with all kinds of food imaginable on our left. On the right, there’s a whole row of colourful booths boasting all sorts of games you can play to win prizes. (No goblins, thankfully.) (Yet.)

Shepard points straight ahead. “On the ground over there, past the slide.”

A _bouncy slide._ It’s incredible. Kids in all sorts of costumes—princesses and pirates and everything in between—are screaming and sliding down, landing with a _flump_ into a soft pile of hay at the bottom. There’s a bouncy castle, too, that looks like a haunted house, and one of those big jungle gyms with a ball pit.

Far behind it all, I see a field littered with twisting vines and orange pumpkins of all sizes. And—

“What’s that?”

Leafy stalks in neat rows, all uniformly pointing into the sky. People are running amidst them and gathered around what looks like an entrance.

“A corn maze?” Shepard says, as if it should be obvious. He grins and practically frog-marches Penny through the archway; Baz and I follow behind. When we get there he turns and clears his throat like he’s about to give a speech. “Listen, guys. We’re probably the oldest people here besides the parents. And that’s totally fine. I’m honestly pretty sad for you that you didn’t have normal childhoods—”

“Really,” Penny mutters, rolling her eyes, “I’d never have wished for a _Normal_ childhood—”

“So I give you full permission to be kids today,” Shepard continues, ignoring her. “Make some memories you never got.”

And with that he turns around and presents our tickets to a lady dressed as Morticia Addams, as if he hasn’t said something totally profound. Something that’s cut right to the core of me.

Penny and Baz don’t seem to get it. (They’re both scoffing—they’re two peas in a pod, I swear.) But no one’s told me this before—that I just get to be a kid. And no one’s done something like this for me before—given me the chance to actually do it.

I mean, Baz comes from a family of Magickal farmers, essentially, and Penny has no interest in pumpkin patches. But looking around, this seems like something I’d have actually wanted to do. But I never got the chance.

My idea of childhood activities were much more… well, life-threatening than this.

I think I was only okay with it because I didn’t know what I was missing out on.

And because I thought it was my destiny.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Baz**

Simon’s got my sleeve bunched in one hand and is dragging me resolutely to the food. He looks happy; he’s able to have his wings out and everything. (That’s a thing he can do, now—retract them at will.) And the food _does_ smell good. I feel like an absolute numpty—they made me wear this ridiculous high-collared shirt and slick my hair back like I haven’t done since school. (It made me remember how much of a caricature of a vampire I actually look like.)

He pauses before the stalls, looking back at me with bright eyes. “What should we try first?” he asks. A roguish grin creeps across his face. “Maybe the… blood pops?”

I’m sure my expression is horrified. “The _what?”_

He’s practically pushing me to the stall. “Two blood pops, please!”

“Wait, no—”

“Four fifty,” the man at the counter says. He’s dressed like Dracula, of course, plastic fangs, wig, dribble of fake blood and all. 

“Aren’t they three each?” Simon says.

The man nods at me. “Vampire’s discount.” I’m panicked for a moment—does he _know,_ somehow—but then he jerks a thumb to the sign next to him, which says in red, dripping letters: _50% off for anyone dressed like a vampire!_

Right. Here I am. Out in the open.

I attempt a smile around my fangs and Simon laughs. He pays and accepts the two bloodred popsicles. “Thanks!”

“Cool wings,” the guy says.

Simon beams as we walk away.

“I’m not eating that,” I say. “Drinking that. Whatever.”

Simon quite literally takes my hand and curls my fingers around the wooden stick. “Probably tastes a hell of a lot better than actual blood.”

“Not yours,” I mutter, just loud enough for only him to hear. He chuckles and takes my other hand, leaning into me as we walk away. I can’t tell if one of these food stalls is selling buttered popcorn, or if it’s just Simon. (Probably both.)

Something moves at the edges of my vision, out near the corn maze. I’ve felt on edge since we got here—like there’s dark magic here. But with so many Normals around…? 

Simon sucks the top of the “blood” popsicle into his mouth obscenely and winks at me, and the paranoid thoughts fly out the window. I roll my eyes, tamping down a smile. 

“Hey, it’s cherry flavoured!” he says. He takes a long lick off the side. “Just like our—”

“Do _not_ say it.” It’s nice, in a way, not having to retract my fangs. I try a bit of my own popsicle. (It really tastes nothing like blood.) (But it really does taste like– oh, _hell.)_

“We have to try the corn dogs!” Simon’s dragging me again, fake devil horns bouncing along with his hair. “Have you seen the gooey butter cake stall yet?”

“You’re a moron,” I tell him, but my heart isn’t in it.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Penny**

“Fresh pressed cider,” Shepard says. “Can you imagine anything better?”

“I mean, I can imagine a lot of things that are better…” 

Including a pumpkin patch that’s not possibly run by goblins after Simon’s blood.

“It was rhetorical.” He bumps my shoulder with his own. “C’mon, loosen up. We’re here to have fun.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because the name of this place is actually _really_ sketchy. Like, things that have tried to kill us before sketchy.”

We fall silent as we approach the stall, where, like Shepard says, they’re pressing apples and brewing cider right in front of us. He gets two steaming cups and hands me one. “Cheers.”

I curl my fingers around the paper cup as we walk to an empty spot, fallen leaves swirling at our feet. I take a sip, relishing the warmth… then nearly choke on it. What in _Morgana’s name_ am I drinking? 

“Is this just… hot apple juice?” I say, stalling in my tracks. I stare at my cup with some measure of horror.

Shepard’s glasses are completely steamed up. He slides them up to rest on his head. “Um. It’s spicy hot apple juice, I guess?”

“I thought it was cider.”

“Yeah,” he says. _“Apple_ cider.”

“Well, where’s the alcohol?”

He frowns. “Did you miss the part where this was, like, a family establishment? They’re not gonna have _spiked_ cider.”

“It’s not spiked,” I cry, “that’s just how cider is!”

He laughs and takes another sip of his drink. “You’ve clearly been going to some interesting pumpkin patches.”

“I haven’t been going to _any_ pumpkin patches.” We continue meandering past the food area—I’ve lost sight of Simon and Baz, but they’re definitely in there somewhere—and out to where the pumpkins are. Shepard is humming. Possibly skipping. “What’s next on your list of eternal family friendly autumn-themed torture?” 

“Up to you,” he answers, stooping over to examine a fat orange pumpkin. “There’s jack-o-lantern carving, mini pumpkin painting, bobbing for apples…”

“We can try carving…” I say, hesitantly. (Give Shep an inch, he’ll take a mile.)

Shepard, in perpetually good spirits, grins and points to a large sign above the carving area. “Sure, but we’ll have to enter the competition.”

A competition. Now _there’s_ something I can get behind.

“Let’s do it,” I declare. “And let’s win.”

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

“No. No fucking way,” Baz is saying as I drag him to the apple bobbing station. “Stop if you want to live, Snow,” he sneers in his most intimidating, ice-cold tone. 

He’s so dramatic. I wave him off with my free hand. “Empty threats.” 

“I’ll dig up Merlin’s _grave_ before I participate in some inane ritual to catch apples with my—”

I turn on him with my most pleading look. “Please?”

“That’s not going to work.”

I pout and blink a few times. Baz rolls his eyes. He looks so effortlessly sardonic like this, with his sharp fangs out and hair slicked back. And dead handsome, too. “It’ll be fun,” I attempt. “And– And you’ll be so good at it! Because of– you know.”

We approach the station at a snail’s pace. Baz is literally digging his heels into the ground as I drag him. He shoots about seventeen death glares my way, but I know pretty well how to ignore them by now. “My hair’s going to be ruined,” he mutters, slipping an elastic off his wrist to tie it up. 

“You’re literally a _m_ _age,”_ I mutter back. 

“Fuck you, Snow.”

Baz has got a man-bun now, so my brain’s short-circuited a little. But I still have enough in me to shoot back, “You’ll have to ask me more nicely than that.”

He hides a laugh behind his hand and reluctantly approaches the barrel with me.

“Welcome!” a lady in plaid and a straw hat says. _(She’d_ look like a pop star too, if she wasn’t wearing this outfit.) (Maybe a country star?) (Are there female goblins?) She explains the rules, assures us that the water’s changed between each round, then plops a few shiny apples in and sets us loose. “And go!”

I immediately drop to my knees, squeeze my eyes shut, and thrust my head into the cold water. I can hear Baz groan in defeat, then follow suit with a light splash. My nose bumps an apple, but it’s so fucking slippery I can’t catch it. I let out a few air bubbles. _Shit._

Baz is definitely going to win. He’s going to spear an apple on his fangs and gloat over me for the rest of the day. (But at least he’ll have frizzy hair.) (I guess that’s not enjoyable for either of us, actually.) 

I find another apple and try to bite it, but it spins round and round. I chase it down, bumping into something that is… definitely not an apple. Something soft…?

Baz spares a second of air to kiss me underwater.

Which is totally against the rules. I’m so shocked that I let out all my air in a huff of bubbles and have to lift my head out of the water, coughing and sputtering. Baz surfaces gracefully a moment later, apple captured with—of course—his fangs.

He carefully pries it free, examining the perfect puncture marks. “I win.”

“Congratulations!” the pretty lady in plaid says. 

“Cheater,” I groan.

“I won fair and square.” Baz shakes out his wet hair and turns to leave, taking a bite of the perfect red apple in his hand. 

“Thanks for playing!”

I jostle him a bit as we walk away. He grins wickedly at me, fangs and all. 

I steal the apple and take a humongous bite. I’m owed that much, at least.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Shepard**

Penelope Bunce is a force of nature when she puts her mind to something, I swear to Bill Nye. She’s focused on her pumpkin like it’s an APUSH final, and if I didn’t know better I’d think she was spelling it. (On second thought, maybe she is.)

I thought we were going to work together, but she snatched the roundest pumpkin she could find and immediately got to work without a word. So I guess I’m on my own, which I don’t mind—and anyway, I doubt Penny’d ever go along with my design.

I finish the first wing and attempt some kind of double-layer construction, but honestly I’m the worst at crafts. Penny’s making something crazy intricate, with geometric patterns. I think it might be BB-8 from Star Wars, but she won’t tell me.

The pumpkin vines rustle around us, and there are weird echoes coming from the corn maze, but it’s probably just the breeze. Not that there’s no magic here—there’s magic _everywhere—_ but we’re safe, for now at least.

About ten minutes in, Simon and Baz show up. Both of their heads and shoulders are soaked, hair plastered to their foreheads, but Simon’s smiling brightly. Probably has something to do with the huge tray of gooey butter cake he’s holding.

Baz looks ready to set the entire pumpkin patch on fire, us included. But like, in a playful way. 

They slide into chairs next to us. Penny doesn’t even look up. Simon starts talking my ear off about how good the gooey butter cake is—I knew he’d like it—and Baz has stopped being murderous and is watching the whole thing go down with literal hearts in his eyes.

So I’d say the day is a success, so far.

It’s just. Just one thing.

They don’t know about the corn goblins.

* * *

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

This is the best afternoon I’ve had in a really long time.

I’m watching Penny make an awesome BB-8 pumpkin while Shepard and Baz talk about… _crops._ (You can’t make this stuff up.) It’s not what I expected them to bond over, but if discussions about Magickal wheat growing practices and the importance of crop rotation—with Shep going on a ten-minute tangent about alien crop circles, of course—make them happy, I guess I won’t judge.

Shepard gives up on his pumpkin after Baz asks if he’s trying to carve a picture of me. “It’s _Mothman,”_ he groans, as if it should be obvious. He shoves the pumpkin away, and it rolls around a little on its base. “I’m gonna go lasso a pumpkin. Wanna come?”

“No,” Baz and Penny say together, just as I jump up from the bench.

 _“Fuck_ yes,” I say.

Shepard grins widely and leads me to one of the game booths. I get about seven compliments on my “costume” as we walk.

“Here,” he says, handing me a cowboy hat. (I have no idea where he got it from.) He places a tall white hat on his own head and shows me the proper angle. I can’t decide if I should feel cool or like a numpty, but I go along with it as the booth attendant passes us ropes.

The pumpkins are set on pedestals, like awards. “Ever tied a lasso, partner?” Shep asks.

I’ve taken to America so much more than Baz and Penny have that I think Shep sometimes forgets I also grew up in England. He shows me how to make the loop, nearly giddy with excitement.

“Why are we lassoing pumpkins, again?”

“Because the Midwest is on _crack,”_ Shepard says, and then he hooks a thumb in his belt loop, tips his hat, swings the lasso overhead in three wide circles, and whips it toward the pumpkins. 

Ten minutes later, we’ve both completely failed to lasso any pumpkins. My stomach hurts from laughter. I hand back my cowboy hat. (Shepard wants to keep his.) (If I’m being honest, I kind of want to keep mine, too.)

I turn around and almost bump into Baz. (How long was he standing there?) He holds out another gooey butter cake to me, like a peace offering, then folds his arms. “Do you want to go on the bouncy slide?”

“I– erm…” I try to say through a mouthful of cake. “Wha?”

“The bouncy slide,” he repeats. “You’ve been sneaking glances at it all afternoon. I won’t offer again.”

I kiss him. I don’t stop kissing him and I don’t care who sees. Because this is the kind of thing we do, now; we come back to America. We’re not here trying to fix broken things or avoid anything, or fight anything. (Internally, externally.) We’re here to visit pumpkin patches and go on bouncy slides just for the hell of it.

“I love you,” I tell him, and he says, “Is that a yes?”

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Penny**

I think I’m staring.

I definitely shouldn’t be staring. I mean, this isn’t something I expected to be staring at. I mean.

Shepard’s wearing a pure white cowboy hat. It should be appalling—the front of it features an American-flag patterned star—but he wears it like he was meant to wear it. Like his head was just waiting for an obscene white cowboy hat to be placed on it.

He looks all… lean and rangy and… 

Nicks and Slick. 

“Penny?” he says. Possibly for the third time. I shake myself. 

“Yeah?”

“I was just asking, um, how you feel about doing the all-terrain hayride. Or a tractor ride?”

I blink. “You can ride a tractor?”

He shrugs. “You can ride anything.” Then he snorts at himself, shaking his head. “Sorry, that sounded dirty.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m up for a ride if you are.”

That sounded dirty, too.

_Well, you know what they say: save a horse, ride a cowboy…_

Shepard lets out a surprised laugh, then loops his arm with mine like we’re heading down the yellow brick road. He tips his hat at the attendant. “Promise to bring it back,” he says, and then we’re off down a dirt path to the line for the hayride.

We get distracted on the way, of course—first by apple cider donuts, which, I have to admit, are incredible—then by the petting zoo. They’re doing a feeding, so we get to stand inside with bottles of milk while dozens of tiny lambs rush in. Shepard’s laugh as the smallest lamb runs up to him is so broad and joyful I almost wish I had a camera.

By the time we make it to the hayride, the sun is beginning to set. “Last call!” the driver yells. He’s handsome—freakishly so, but maybe I’m just being paranoid. I look around for a way to catch his reflection, but there’s nothing. 

We clamber into the wagon and settle on hay bales, which are _not_ as comfortable as they look. We’re at the edge, right against the back railing.

“Ouch,” I grumble. It’s poking into my bum in ten different places. “Why’d I wear a dress?”

“You always wear a dress.” Shepard peels off his flannel, revealing a fitted white t-shirt underneath. “Here, you can sit on this.”

I do. If chivalry isn’t dead, I might as well take advantage of it.

The tractor pulling us along suddenly roars to life, and we’re off with a jolt. I’m thrown backwards into the wooden slats behind me—and into Shep. He laughs and rights me carefully, brushing hay off my shoulder. “Easy there.”

We trundle along gently, winding through fields, past the pumpkins and the corn maze and into the setting sun. The cool wind whips in my hair; the air smells crisp, like earth and apples. “So,” I say after a minute, “what exactly makes this… all-terrain?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Shep says with a grin.

A moment later, the driver’s voice blares through a bullhorn. “Hang on, everyone!” 

Oh, no.

I send a panicked glance Shep’s way as the tractor engine revs and we suddenly shoot forward. A child in front of us literally goes flying. I make a mad grab for the first two things I can reach, which happen to be a useless clump of hay and Shepard’s right hand.

“Seven… _snakes!”_ It comes out more like a screech. 

Shepard’s laughing with delight. “Fun, right?”

“Do you have a death wish?!”

“I mean, not necessarily–” He whoops as we crest a bump and _literally catch air—_ “but I’m not actually sure that I _can_ die, so why not?”

“Why _not?_ _That’s_ your—” We lurch right and I’m suddenly thrown roughly against him. “— _oof._ Attitude?”

“Duck!”

“Where?”

Shepard tugs me and we tumble to the ground just as we blast into the forest behind the farm. (I didn’t even know there _was_ a forest.) A humongous branch swings overhead right where my head just was. “Morgana’s _toes,”_ I hiss against the hay, “this isn’t _family friendly,_ it’s a death trap!”

“Only the strong survive!” Shep chirps.

I try to stand but my knees immediately buckle as we turn again. I fall and crash directly into Shepard. Again. 

“Sorry,” I mutter. “I keep hitting you.”

He makes no move to push me away, just laughs. “Totally fine.”

I sit up, tumbling off Shepard’s lap, and end up getting cozy with a bale of hay instead. And Shepard, on my left. Impossibly, his cowboy hat is still on his head. He’s tucked his glasses away for safekeeping, and his face looks naked and vulnerable without them.

“Big bump ahead!” the driver yells. We’re thrown backwards into the hay as we crest what feels like a 90-degree hill. We veer left, and this time Shepard tumbles into me, both of us crashing into the wooden railing on the right.

“I’m going to have bruises,” I groan as I struggle to sit again. My dress keeps riding up, and I keep having to smooth it down. Shepard’s flannel is gone, probably vanished into the ether by this cursed fucking hayride.

“You’re a _Speaker,”_ he insists, “you can heal us right up.”

“Not the point.”

“If you thought _that_ was scary,” the driver yells, “get ready for the real fun!”

I turn to Shepard, desperately. “No, no, we’re getting off—”

“Unlike Simon, I _don’t_ have wings to like, fly us away—”

We suffer through another five minutes of what is essentially the Indiana Jones ride at Disney World, but without seat belts. (Well, I suffer. I think Shepard is actually having fun, despite the fact that we’re being thrown around like sneakers in a washing machine.)

“Alright folks, we’re back on flat terrain,” announces the driver. I breathe again. “Check out the sunset behind us and enjoy the smooth ride back.”

I swallow down my motion sickness and haul myself back onto the hay bale. The hay stabs me in the bum and I nearly cry. **_“Return to owner—flannel,”_ **I cast wearily, waving my ring hand, and the flannel zooms up and hits Shepard in the face.

He’s still grinning, somehow, as he plops himself onto the bale next to me. A little too close, but we’ve basically been forced into cuddling at this point, so it’s not like I actually care. “Fun, right?” he says.

He looks so hopeful that for once, I can’t bear to strike him down. So I accept the flannel and shrug. “The occasional near-death experience is good. Keeps us sharp.”

“Exactly.” He smiles with teeth, rocking a bit with the motion of the hayride. He looks so strange without his glasses—softer at the edges, boyish. (It works, on him. When I take off my glasses, I look flat and weird and all of twelve years old.) _“And_ there didn’t turn out to be any goblins.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t speak so soon.”

He smiles indulgently. “Same old Penny. I love your cynicism.”

“Really?”

“I mean, it’s just one of many things…” He clears his throat. “Yeah.”

_You love—_

Wait. 

For the love of _Stevie._

Looking into Shepard’s dark eyes clearly, without the sheen of the glasses over them, is like looking into a mirror. Except it’s like, a magic mirror. One where I see all the parts of me I thought were unlovable reflected back exactly how he sees me. Which is to say—

“Put your glasses back on.” It tumbles out of my mouth. Because it’s too much, it’s too vulnerable, we both look and feel like shit but this hayride has suddenly turned a touch _romantic,_ and… 

“Um. Okay.” He digs them out of his pocket, but they come out in two pieces. “Damn.”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly, grabbing the glasses in my ring hand, “I can make them **_good as new.”_ ** I have to cast it twice because my voice wavers the first time.

He slides them on, expression inscrutable. “You okay?”

It’s an unfamiliar feeling, almost panicky. A thousand million miles away from anything I ever felt for Micah, this weird, tugging urge that his letters never brought. I guess that’s a good thing.

“Wait,” I say, feeling completely out of control, “take them off again.” He does, and then I slide mine off, too. I think it’s easier like this, not being able to see his lips in like, excruciating detail.

I was wrong. Which seems to be a trend nowadays, since we graduated and the world turned upside-down. 

But I guess there’s one thing I _can_ control.

So I make a half-blind fumble for the back of Shepard’s neck and tug his face towards mine.

And I miss. Of course. Our noses bump together painfully as we crest another bump.

He laughs. “You _were_ going for the lips, right?”

“Yes!” I say, exasperated. He smiles, then loops an arm around my waist and finds my mouth with his. And then I’m not worried about being half-blind, because I close my eyes. 

His lips are soft and warm. And suddenly it doesn’t feel flailing or panicky any more. Suddenly it feels something like magic; like a tugging at my navel, like something zinging through the core of me.

The elated feeling lasts all of three seconds before the hayride screeches to an abrupt halt. We both jolt forward, tumbling onto the wooden slats _again._ “Fuck a _nine—”_ is all I manage to get out before I notice that the rest of the wagon is completely empty.

“Where is ev—” Shepard begins. He’s abruptly cut off by an ear of corn hitting him in the face. “Hey!”

“What. Is. Happening.” A piece of corn comes flying at me from the right, and I bat it away.

Shepard pries the corn cob off of his head to reveal that it has an angry face, sharp teeth, and tiny, flailing legs.

“What the fuck!” I cry.

“Corn goblin,” he says, flinging it away. He doesn’t even seem surprised. He fumbles for his glasses and looks around for more. Darkness is falling rapidly, and I can’t find my glasses at _all._ Something bites painfully into my ankle.

“Ouch!” I bend down to grab the tiny creature. It gnaws at my hand, and I desperately try to fling it off without losing an extremity. “Shepard, this is _not_ a goblin!”

He’s holding a wriggling piece of corn at arm’s length. Its husk has transformed into tiny green arms and legs, and it grunts like those coconut things from Moana. “Hey little buddy,” he says. “I’m Shepard, this is Penny, and we just wanted to know why you’re— OW! Penny it bit me!”

I flail, kicking an encroaching corn cob away from us. “Wow, shocker!”

He flings the creature away and tosses me my glasses. “Let’s just get out of here!”

I put them on just in time to see, in full clarity, dozens of ears of corn flying into the wagon to ambush us. **_“Float like a butterfly!”_ **I scream, and we jump out the back of the wagon.


	2. Go, Cornhuskers!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corn with a sprinkling of goblins. As a treat.

****

**Simon**

“Baz, your— your jeans are being eaten.”

Baz looks down with utter disdain. “Can we do something else, Snow? Anything else?”

“I like goats,” I say, bending down to pet one. “They remind me of Ebb.”

He sobers at that. “Five more minutes with the goats. Then we go.”

“Where?” I ask. “Isn’t it closing soon?”

Baz frees his jeans from the goat’s gnawing and casts a discreet spell to patch the hole. “Up to you.”

We’ve done the bouncy slide and bouncy castle. It was awesome, and the kids loved my wings. Baz spent the whole time trying not to smile, and it was frankly one of the most adorable things I’d ever seen—Baz Pitch, bouncing in his socks, trying to look bored and miserably failing to keep a straight face. 

“How generous,” I say. I stand up, brushing off my jeans. They’re black. Baz made me wear them, to play up the devil thing I guess, along with his black leather jacket. (I think he just wanted to see me in his jacket, because he didn’t even complain as he spelled it to accommodate my shoulders and wings.)

I reach for my gooey butter cake only to find out that the goats have demolished it. Including the plastic tray. Typical.

Baz takes my hand, and our fingers interlace in that wonderfully familiar way. We wander through the pumpkin patch. He finds a mini pumpkin and sets it on my head, and I laugh trying to balance it.

Like I said—it’s a good day. A really good day.

I should have known it couldn’t last, because now we’re totally lost in the corn maze.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Baz**

Night is falling rapidly, and there’s no sign of the exit. It feels like the tall, leafy walls are closing in, and I struggle to tamp down the panic in my throat. I grip Simon’s hand so tight he yelps. “What’s wrong?”

“N- nothing,” I manage. _Look up, there’s the sky. Open. There’s air._

“Not nothing,” he insists. I’m paling rapidly; I can literally feel the blood draining from my face. He lays a finger over the pulse in my wrist, which is actually approximating a normal human’s rate at this point. 

“I know, I just.” I shake my head, look up again. “It’s fine.”

“Hey,” Simon says gently. “Look at me.” I do. He’s framed in golden, slanting light, in green-tinted shadows. “You’re okay. It’s just corn. We’re outdoors. You can clear a path with magic if we really need to. Or I can fly us out.”

Locked in a coffin, years ago now, and look where it’s got me. Scared of fucking _corn._

“I’ll manage,” I say. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Simon trails a hand along the leafy wall. The corn maze is deserted—I think we got the last entry before closing time. And suddenly I hear a crackling sound… the patter of tiny feet…

“Snow,” I whisper, “do you hear that?”

His eyes narrow, and he grasps at his hip on reflex, reaching for a sword that won’t come. “Yeah.” He whips his head around and gestures left. “C’mon.”

I stay half a step behind him as he creeps around the turns. A high-pitched cackling suddenly echoes down the pathways, and I jump. “What was that.”

His grip tightens on my hand. He’s fiercely protective as ever, falling back into step with me, wings flaring out as if to shield us from whatever the fuck is in here.

“Doesn’t sound like goblins…” he murmurs.

“As we’ve learned,” I say through gritted teeth, “America contains many surprises.”

We turn corner after corner, and I honestly think we’re getting even _more_ lost. But I’m with Simon Snow, and he’s gotten out of worse scrapes than a moderately creepy corn maze. 

And then I hear the scream. 

_“Penny!”_ Simon yells, eyes wide, and he breaks into a full-out run.

I follow him through the maze, trusting his navigation instincts, wondering if this is the time to suggest we just fucking _fly_ out and hope to Crowley no one sees. It feels like we’re getting deeper and deeper into the maze as we run; like it’s getting darker and darker, but maybe that’s just the sky itself.

It feels like the maze is swallowing us whole.

And then the leaves rustle, and the world lurches as the corn stalks come to life around us.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

I look around for the source of the rustling. Maybe it’s just wind. Maybe it’s something else. 

_Land of Bonety…_

Baz is gripping my arm so tightly it’s cutting off my circulation, and I wish to _Merlin_ I had a sword right now. I’d feel so much safer with its familiar weight in my grip. But here I am, with nothing but wings and fists and plastic devil horns.

A strange, high-pitched sound hits us right before the ears of corn do.

They shoot out from both walls, half peeled-open. I stumble as one rams me in the side of the head, losing sight of Baz almost immediately. “Ow! What the _fuck?”_

Baz yanks a corn off his shirt and snarls at it. “Eight _snakes—_ It has a face!”

I hold out the corn in front of me, and sure enough, it has an angry little face and sharp piranha teeth. “What the fuck?” I repeat. I yelp as something sinks its teeth into my leg. I flail, kicking it away. I whip my head around, looking for the source of the corn creatures.

Baz tosses his corn cob away and rips a second in half with his bare hands. 

_“Screeeeee!”_

The high-pitched sound, it turns out, is the tiny corn demons screaming bloody murder. I wrench two more off my jeans and throw them behind us. They’re closing in from every angle, toddling along the dirt floor of the maze. 

_Consume…_

“What was that?”

The maze is moving, writhing, and the deep grumbling sound almost sounds like words… 

_Consume…_

Baz literally throws himself onto me. “Get us the fuck out of here!”

I try to launch us upward, but the walls are too narrow and something’s weighing my wings down. “Help me get them off!” I yell. I beat my wings, sending the tiny corn creatures flying. “Hang on—”

I twist, clinging tightly to Baz, then plant a foot firmly on the largest cornstalk I can see and push off. As we quickly rise into the air, several more corn creatures come flying at us, screaming their weird, tinny war cries. Baz bares his fangs, but they’re undeterred.

They jump and cling onto my legs, weighing me down. I can feel their teeth through my jeans. **_“Buzz off!”_ ** Baz yells, pointing his wand at them. He has his other arm in a vice grip around my neck. I struggle to fly us up and _out._ “Blast it— **_Sod off! Fuck off!”_ **

That one works; a few of them fall to the ground. But even more pile on in their place, launched at us from all angles.

 **_“Back off!”_ ** he snarls. I fling my tail free and wrap it around Baz’s waist as he throws his whole body into the spells. **_“Fuck off and die!”_ **

We’re close to the top of the corn stalks. I dip down, scraping my toes against the leaves, and kick the remaining creatures off. “We have to find Penny and Shep.”

Baz looks wild in the eyes. (And the hair.) “Have you ever seen those things? Or… _that?”_ He looks down, where the corn maze is literally turning into a sinkhole, folding in on itself. It crumples with a deep rumbling noise, an echo of _Consume…_ floating up to our ears.

Holy Merlin.

I flap desperately, covering as much ground as possible to get _away_ from it. 

“Must be an Omaha specialty,” I say. “Shep probably knows.” 

Baz shifts to cling to me like a koala as we scan the ground for Penny and Shep. Finally, he spots them over his shoulder. “There!” he says, pointing.

They’re standing back to back against a hayride wagon, completely surrounded by the tiny corn creatures. Penny’s holding her ring hand out warily, seemingly keeping them at bay.

“I can’t lift everyone,” I say.

“We’ll use magic,” Baz says. “Or we’ll fight.”

I swoop, and we head into the fray.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Shepard**

Penelope cast a spell that made her glow— **_The lady’s not for turning_ ** _—_ and the corn goblins seem to have been buffered back by some invisible barrier. But more and more are piling up, and she’s shaking with the effort. Plus, they’re heading for me now instead of her.

The thing is, the family who owns this farm reported something weird happening a while ago. Whispers in the corn, the sound of feet. So I came to check it out, but when I saw the first sentient ear of corn, I ran like hell.

I didn’t mean to make my friends fight the corn goblins. They only come out after sundown, and we were supposed to leave before then! Not my fault that Penny and I made out on a hayride—holy _shit,_ Penny and I made out on a hayride—and Simon and Baz got lost canoodling or whatever in the corn maze.

There’s a sinister shadow above, and I hope to God it’s Simon.

He touches down with Baz in his arms like an avenging devil and spins around to face the corn goblins. Baz summons twin flames in his fists. Penny pushes me behind her and steps forward, ring hand out.

Fuck _me,_ they’re awesome.

I really want in on the action, though, so I toss Simon a rake—he catches it without looking, because he’s _that cool—_ and step up next to them.

“What are you?” Simon calls out to the corn goblins, but that’s as far as he gets before they burst through Penny’s barrier and hurl themselves at us.

They catapult through the air like Angry Birds. Like the yellow ones. 

And we’re the piggies.

“They’re corn goblins!” I yell. I’m wielding my hoe like a staff—honestly I have no idea how to do this, I think I was better as a getaway driver—and trying to knock them away. I yelp as one bites into my thigh. 

“Why are they attacking us?” Simon doesn’t wait for my answer, just charges into the fray with his rake. He’s a whirl of fury, slapping them away with his wings, flinging them in all directions with the head of the rake. 

One latches onto his tail, and he whips it from side to side, hitting the ground on the right, then left, then right— _thump, thump, thump—_ until the goblin’s dead.

“Stay back!” Penny yells. “Simon, get down!” She points her hand at the goblins flying at us. **_“Dead in the air!”_ **

They thump to the ground, transforming into totally normal cobs of corn. No eyes or legs or teeth in sight. 

_Interesting._

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

These fucking corns are going down. _What the hell are we doing fighting_ corn? 

**_“Off with your head!”_ **Penny yells from somewhere behind me, and several of the goblins (goblins!) around me are severed in half.

Baz is setting them on fire, and it smells so good. I know it’s the wrong time, but the delicious smell of grilled corn is almost overpowering. Is it ethical to eat these, after we’re done killing them?

 **_“Another one bites the dust!”_ **Baz shouts. A circle of corn goblins drop dead around me. He’s suddenly next to me, with a fierce, almost grinning expression. “Holding up?”

I swat a goblin away with my rake and punt another one high into the air with a strange kind of elation. “Pretty well.” 

Baz tosses a corn goblin into the air behind me, and I swing my tail and swat it hard like a baseball. It goes flying with a _“screeeee!”_

We laugh and Baz lobs more goblins at me, all in a row like I’m a trick juggler. I spin to hit them, sending them soaring away with my tail or the rake. 

I like fighting _with_ Baz—as long as I don’t accidentally nail him in the head with the rake, it’s actually kind of fun. And they’re just corn with teeth, it’s not like they can seriously hurt us. I wrench another goblin off Baz’s jacket. It’s torn to shreds; he’s going to kill me if the corn doesn’t first.

Baz holds up a thrashing corn goblin. “Quite the looker, hm, Snow?”

A goblin nails me in the side of the head. “Hate you,” I grumble. I drop the corn to the floor and stomp on it with two feet.

“You love me,” Baz says.

Another wave of corn goblins surge towards us, and when I look back, Baz is gone.

“Baz?” I whip around as a screaming goblin lands directly on top of my head and starts yanking ferociously at my curls. 

“Hey, it’s like Ratatouille—” Shep says from somewhere behind me.

“Not the time!” I wrench the corn off, along with probably half my hair, and toss it away.

_“SIMON!”_

“Baz!” I push through the storm of corn. He’s struggling wildly against a group of them that have managed to get him flat on the ground. They’re a sea underneath him, carting him off like he’s the guy from Gulliver’s Travels. (Gulliver?)

He thrashes about, but I think they’ve tied him up with the silky corn hair. What the hell could these goblins want with _Baz?_

I chase after him, hearing him cast **_“Dropping like flies!”_ ** and **_“Early grave!”_ **but his voice still fades away before I can reach him. The corn cobs keep jumping on me, tearing at my clothes and skin.

_Baz is being carted away by evil sentient corn._

Fucking arseholes.

And they’re not even fit! I mean, if we’re going to face goblins, they should at least be handsome, right?

I bloody hope they taste good once they’re dead.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Penny**

No matter how many corn goblins I kill, they just keep coming. Shepard’s fending them off the best he can with his hoe, but there are always more. I can’t summon fire as well as Baz can—that seemed to be the most effective. 

I’m putting all of my power into the spells, knowing I’m going to be nearly drained later. It doesn’t help that half of them aren’t taking. (I hate America.)

Simon streaks by in a blur of red and yellow. Corn goblins are clinging to all of his limbs, tearing up his clothes and skin, but he’s undeterred—he’s furious and sprinting after Baz, yelling his name. They’re _fast,_ and I think they’re carting Baz back into the corn maze.

“We should go help them,” Shepard says, right before a corn goblin jumps onto his face. “Shit, ow!”

I’m too tired for a focused spell that’ll kill the goblin without hurting Shep. I wrench it off him with my hand and throw it into the fray. Then I face the crowd of goblins again, breathing hard. I keep my back to the wagon. “If we can fight our way through, yeah.” I point my ring as a fresh wave of goblins flying at us. **_“Dead as a doornail!”_ **

One shoots through my defenses and starts clawing at my dress like a possessed cat. I grapple with it until Shep crashes in with his hoe and knocks it off me. “Try _Snap, Crackle, Pop,”_ he says.

I catch movement to my right and see Simon running for his life with dozens of corn goblins in hot pursuit. “Penny! We need to—!” He pauses to growl at the corn cobs, brandishing his rake like it’s the bloody Sword of Mages. He knocks several of them off his tail—both figuratively and literally. “I preferred ploughshares, just saying!” 

“Where’s Baz?” I yell. 

“Maze!” But Simon’s being chased in the opposite direction from the maze. He’s practically running in circles, like a cartoon character. (The cartoon devil tail _really_ doesn’t help.) He keeps patting himself down like he’s on fire, but it’s just the corn.

“Let’s go,” I tell Shepard, and he tries to beat us a path through the crowd of corn to Simon. 

“Fuck you fucking _corns!”_ Simon yells, surrounded.

He hauls up a huge pumpkin from the ground and lobs it at the throng of corn goblins. It crashes into them, splattering everywhere into orange and yellow chunks. He shakes his head like he can’t believe that actually worked, then hurls another pumpkin.

“Do the spell!” Shep says. He sweeps the hoe along the ground, uprooting several toddling corns, and knocks two more out of the air. They just _keep coming._ I’d set this whole field on fire if Baz wasn’t off somewhere being carted away by devil corn.

I raise my hand. **_“Snap, crackle, pop!”_ **

The sky above us _explodes._

Simon freezes, then looks up and opens his mouth with obvious delight as a shower of popcorn rains down on us.

“Gross, Simon!” 

“Wha?” he says through a mouthful of ex-corn goblin. His clothes are hanging off him and he’s covered in scratches; he looks like he’s been in a tiff with Edward Scissorhands.

Shepard shoves a handful in his mouth. “Not bad. Needs salt.”

I glare at both of them. “In case you forgot, we’re _rescuing Baz?”_

As we run towards the maze, Shepard explains to Simon, “I mean, when they die they turn back into regular corn, so I think it’s okay to eat them?”

“Is it still vegan?” Simon asks.

“Guys,” I hiss. We’re at the entrance to the corn maze, which is no longer really an entrance, more of a whirling, twisting mass of cornstalks. 

Simon looks around warily, rake held out in front of him. “We need to split up. I’ll fly over and pick up Baz. You two stay here and guard.”

He shoots into the air without another word—wings pressed tightly to his back as he gains height and speed, then flaring wide as he soars over the maze. I watch him circle, then nosedive like a bird into the middle of the maze.

“Penny.” I turn around to see what Shepard is pointing at. The ground around us is rumbling, stirring. All around, ears of corn are surfacing like skeletal hands in a zombie film graveyard. Yellow tips reach the surface, and then the corn goblins burst out, angry and ready for blood.

I brandish my ring again. **_“Run for your life!”_ **

About half of them turn around and dash away from us, but the others continue to charge on tiny legs. Shepard and I back up, closer to the entrance of the monstrous maze. He whispers, “Try _you’ll like it better, or my name isn’t—_ wait, never mind. That only works if your name’s Orville Redenbacher…”

I shake my hand out, trying to regain energy. I’m running out of magic, and fast. 

**_“Six feet under!”_ **I attempt. It’s weak, but a few of them disappear back into the ground.

More and more are popping up out of the ground, like—well, like popcorn—backing us closer to the entrance. Maybe they’re trying to push us into the maze. My heart’s so high in my throat I think I might throw it up. What happens when we can’t fight anymore? When I run out of magic? 

(And if Simon keeps losing his clothes, Baz will soon be useless as well.)

The corn goblins are bunching together, piling on top of each other. Shepard and I exchange a panicked glance and I shoot a halfhearted **_“Stay back!”_ **into the crowd. They’re grouping, growing higher like an anthill…

No. Not a hill.

A monster.

The tiny corn goblins combine forces, blending into one gigantic ear of corn. 

Twenty feet tall, kernels as big as my head, cornstalk legs as thick as oak trunks. It bares sharp yellow teeth on its oblong face, and _roars_ at us. An artillery of corn kernels sprays at us.

I throw an arm over my eyes and drag Shepard back. Better to brave the death maze than let this thing stomp on us.

_“SCREEEEEE!”_

Its roar is like all the little ones combined times a thousand. Like those dog whistles that you can just barely hear, but now it’s hitting all the wrong parts of my brain. 

I stare up at it in frozen horror.

_Thump._

_Thump._

The gargantuan corn goblin stomps towards us.

I grab Shepard’s hand and run like hell.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Baz**

I can’t believe this is how I’m going to go out.

Death by fucking _corn cobs._

I’ve imagined my death so many times, but never quite like this—surrounded with a flaming circle of corn _,_ puffed kernels occasionally popping into the air. It smells delicious. I almost laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Except I don’t, because I’ve idiotically surrounded myself by _flames._ And now I’m going to die.

It’s a bit too familiar for comfort. And the familiarity—the memories all flooding in, darkness and trees—almost makes me want to just let go. Give in.

I spin in a circle, glaring down all the corn goblins drawing nearer. Their heads are on fire, but they’re still moving, screeching. One could fling itself at me any second. One spark and I’m gone.

At least before it was a fire of my own volition. Or it was rich vegan tech startup vampires. Death with dignity. In a sense.

This is… whatever the opposite of that is. Crowley, I think I’m giggling. Death by _corn._ In Omaha, Nebraska, of all places. Flaming corns approach. I laugh nervously, hysterically. Walking corn. Teeny, tiny corn goblins.

Eight fucking snakes.

 **_“Make a wish!”_ **I say with as much conviction as I can muster. There’s no conviction, so it doesn’t catch. 

They’ll be on me in an instant, fiery or not. And this time there’s no Simon Snow to pump his magic into me and extinguish the whole forest. Or corn maze. Whatever.

The stalks are catching fire, and everything around me is ablaze. And from somewhere far away, I hear shouting—Penny and Shepard, fighting these blasted things—and something else. A sinister thumping.

The hysterical part of me suggests that Shepard’s summoned his friend Bigfoot to help.

But we’ve never been so lucky. 

Another shout… and the familiar beating of wings.

_Simon!_

I fall back into a fighting stance, gripping my wand in two sweaty palms. **_“Make a wish!”_ ** I shout again. It catches this time; a quarter of the ring of fire around me goes dark. **_“Make a wish!”_ **I scream. I can practically feel the magic draining from me; it’s not lighting a match, not now. It’s rifling around sodden embers, hoping desperately to find one tiny spark. Raw reserves. The grimy stuff at the bottom.

But Simon’s coming for me. Again.

So I have to make sure there’s something left for him to rescue.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

I find Baz surrounded by a hell circle of fiery corn, because he’s an idiot vampire who can’t seem to remember that he’s fucking _flammable._

I always tell him—if you can do regular spells, why do you have to shoot fire from your hands? And his answer’s always the same: _it’s in my blood, two long lines of fire mages, blah blah._

It’s all bullshit. I know he just thinks it looks cool.

(And it does. That’s the worst part.) (He wields fire like he was meant to; and he looks so good, so _right_ doing it that I think the universe is playing some sort of joke on us.)

“Baz!” I yell.

He looks up just as I tuck my wings and shoot towards him like an arrow. I crash into him along my course (it’s clumsy, but effective), and swoop up, up, away from the flames and the maze. He clings onto me. (He’s good at that.)

“Fuck,” he’s saying. He looks up at me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I—” And then he laughs shakily, and doesn’t stop laughing. “Simon. I almost died from _corn.”_ He shakes his head. “Fucking Crowley— _corn!”_

“It’d be a corny way to go out,” I say, and then I’m holding him tightly and we’re laughing, and laughing.

Our joy at the absurd, successful rescue is short-lived when we spot Penny and Shepard. Penny looks up when we circle overhead and waves her arms wildly. “Don’t land!” she screams.

“What?” I shout.

She points to the entrance, where I see…

Holy Morgana’s tits.

“What is that?!”

A gigantic… ear of corn?

“Goblin king!” Shepard supplies. He and Penny are scrambling backwards to avoid the creature, but they’re about to reach the collapsed part of the maze. They’ll be trapped soon.

“That’s not a goblin king,” I say. “I killed the goblin king! Apparently!”

“Does it _matter?!”_ Penny screeches. “It’s literally trying to squash us! I’m going to try to fly us out of here, but I don’t know if I have enough magic left.”

“Right, okay– hang on,” I tell Baz, and then I fly right at the monster’s head.

He stiffens. “What are you doing?”

“Taking this thing down!” 

“With _what weapon?”_

“You!”

_“What?”_

He’s clinging to me with our chests pressed together, but now I quickly urge him into Battle Position: a glorified bridal carry. “Get your wand ready,” I say. “Or your fire, whatever’s gonna work better—”

“Snow, this is foolhardy!”

“Well, do _you_ have a better plan?”

We circle the beast’s head. Up close it’s dumb and clumsy; it looks like a child’s crayon drawing of a monster. Like some art class fail come to life. Jagged rows of shark teeth, thick angled eyebrows, unblinking black eyes. The folds of its huge green husk, half peeled back, act as completely useless t-rex arms and short, stubby legs.

I almost laugh.

This is child’s play. I’ve fought loads of things scarier than this clown.

It roars at us, flecking us with bits of chewed up corn kernels, and Baz makes a face. I fly right in front of its head. “HEY!” I yell.

“Are you insane?” Baz says.

I bounce up and down in the air, trying to get its attention. “Come on, peabrain…” 

Its beady eyes lock on me, and it lunges with an almighty growl. 

“Alright!” I yell. I let out a joyous whoop (Baz looks at me like I’m crazy) and swing around to the right smoothly. “Over here, you great oaf!”

“You’re actually having fun,” Baz says, shaking his head. “You really are.”

I grin at him. “Of course I am. Look at this thing. It’s a joke.”

“It wasn’t a joke when I was about to die at the hands of _flaming corn!”_

I lure the monster away from Penny and Shep, watching as it turns away from the maze slowly. (So slowly.) “Oh, get over yourself,” I say cheekily. 

The monster roars, waving its tiny t-rex arms with rage, and I laugh so hard I snort. “Aw, you think you’re so scary,” I tease.

“Simon!” Baz seems offended.

It’s literally like a badly drawn dinosaur, but with none of the cool factor. Because it’s literally made of _corn._ I raise my eyebrows at Baz. “Look me in the eye and tell me that thing is scary.”

He looks away pointedly and smiles. I kiss him.

The corn goblin (it’s really _not_ a goblin) lets out an almighty roar. (Is the corn monster homophobic?) 

I stare at it. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, buddy.”

We circle its head lazily, and it spins around, disoriented.

“Anyone else would have pissed themselves by now,” Baz comments casually.

“Yeah, well.” I crack my neck in what I hope is a menacing way. “Too bad it got stuck with the only four people who have— oh, _fuck!”_

In its dizziness, the corn monster has started falling over—and it’s heading right for the maze.

Baz slings a spell at it as we shoot past to find Penny and Shepard. **_“Straight as a ruler!”_ **

The creature wobbles dangerously. 

“That spell won’t work for you!” I shout.

Baz sputters. “Did you just make a _queer joke,_ Snow? I’m oddly proud.”

We soar above the cornstalks. The maze is dark, all twisted and convoluted. “Can you see them?”

Baz points the way. They’re trapped, like I thought—backed up against a gaping hole in the ground leading to who knows where. I can hear Penny casting at the monster, but nothing’s happening. It takes a teetering step backwards, crushing the entrance of the maze with one giant green husk-leg.

“It’s gonna fall!” I shout.

“Yeah, we know!” Penny says, looking up. “ **_Stand on your own two feet! Get up and dance now!”_ ** she casts at the monster. “Does this thing even _have_ feet? Nothing’s working!”

“Put us down,” Baz tells me. “I have an idea.”

He dashes immediately to Shepard and puts his hands on his shoulders. “Corn spells,” he says urgently. “You’re from here. You have to know a corn spell. Something to… cook corn. Harvest corn.” The sound he makes is half-laugh, half-sob. “Kill… corn?”

Shepard is nodding. Thank fuck. 

I tumble to the ground. “If giant corn is what finally kills me, I’m gonna be really mad.”

“We’re _not_ going to die,” Penny says.

“Come here,” Baz orders, eyes blazing. “We have to cast together—it’s not a song, it’s a chant, but it should work—”

“What’s the chant?” Penny asks.

Shepard’s face splits into a huge grin. _“Go, Cornhuskers!”_

“That’s it?” Penelope glances up at the huge shadow falling over us. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’s a regional spell!” Shep claims.

Thankfully, the corn monster doesn’t look like it’s going to fall anymore, but it’s turned around to face us. It bares its yellow teeth again and roars, then starts advancing with steps that shake the earth. _Thump. Thump._

“I think we should just fly away,” I say. “Do you guys even have magic left?”

“What’s a Cornhusker?” Penny says. “What does that even mean?”

“It’s our football team!” Shepard says. “Trust me, it’ll work. If we leave, this thing is just gonna continue terrorizing the pumpkin patch.”

“Baz and I don’t know the team,” Penny says.

“It’s all about intention,” Baz says, already reaching for her hand. “We just have to _really want_ the Cornhuskers to win.”

“Oh!” I say, suddenly remembering. “That’s the match we watched—”

“Yeah!” Shep says.

 _“I_ didn’t watch the match!” Penny protests.

Baz shoves Shepard’s hand into Penny’s, then takes mine. “In a circle. Hurry! Basic magickal theory, Bunce,” he says. “They’ve got the knowledge and intention—and we channel it.”

“Do we get to say it, too?” Shepard asks eagerly. 

“Of course. Throw all the team spirit you’ve got into it. Now– one, two, three!”

_“GO, CORNHUSKERS!”_

We all yell it together, and if I focus hard enough I can almost feel the magic pulsing through the joined circle of our hands. Baz fixes a fierce gaze on the monster. “Again!”

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Baz**

_“GO, CORNHUSKERS!”_

We’ve lost our minds. We’re chanting the name of some fucking American football team at a crude caricature of a corn monster. I think this counts as a low point in my life, honestly.

But intention counts, with magic. So right now…

Right now, I really want to husk some fucking corn.

“Again!” I say.

**_“GO, CORNHUSKERS!”_ **

I feel this one snag. My eyes pop open as the spell floods through me and Bunce and hits the corn creature full in the face. It reels in surprise, roaring as its husk peels away from its body.

“One more time!”

**_“GO, CORNHUSKERS!”_ **

The monster stumbles back in confusion as its arms crumple to the ground and its legs are rendered useless. Its gargantuan yellow body separates clean from the husk with a satisfying peeling, sliding sound.

“Wicked,” Simon says.

“Now _that,”_ Shepard says, “is how you husk corn.”

We stand frozen in place as the corn monster topples to the ground in slow motion. The second it hits the earth, it transforms into a normal, naked cob of corn. (Well, a twenty-foot-long cob of corn.) It bounces twice, sending a shudder through the ground like an earthquake, then rolls to a stop, crushing half the pumpkins beneath its weight.

Penelope’s shaking her head. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Simon breaks the circle first—to pounce on me, of course. 

(Slaying magickal creatures gets him _really_ hot and bothered.) 

(Especially when I’m the one doing it.)

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Penny**

“You’re true Midwesterners now,” Shepard says. 

“How so?” I say.

He turns to me, beaming. (I don’t think Simon and Baz have even heard him—they’re too busy groping each other.) “You’ve stood in a cornfield and cheered on our football team. It’s like, an initiation ritual out here.”

“Oh.” I reach for a scrap of something white stuck to his hair. “What’s that?”

He plucks it from me, frowning. “Darn. I think it’s the remains of my cowboy hat.” He sighs. “Now I can’t bring it back to the nice lady.”

 _“That’s_ your main concern right now? She was probably a goblin, just saying.”

“Hey, how do you think I’ve earned the trust of Normals and Maybes alike?” He shoves the white scrap into his pocket, dejected. “By keeping my promises, that’s how.”

“I think you’ll be forgiven,” I tell him dryly. “I mean, we just saved this entire pumpkin patch from imminent death by corn.”

“True, true.” He’s nodding, handsomely. I mean, we both still look like total shit—covered in exploded popcorn and kernel bits, scratched up by the corn goblins, bitten all over. There’s blood trailing down his cheek and neck, but blood really doesn’t bother me. 

He takes off his dirty glasses and wipes them off on his torn flannel. The motion exposes a slice of his stomach—thin and lean like the rest of him, and covered in those dark winding tattoos.

I mean, I’ve seen him shirtless before, but it’s different now. (Different now, because we’ve kissed?) (Different now, because of how casual, how careless the movement is?)

I kiss him again before I can think better of it.

This time I don’t miss. 

(But I do break his glasses. Again.)

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Baz**

Simon pats the corn fondly as I heft it into Shepard’s truck bed. “You were a sucky villain,” he tells it. 

Penelope huffs. “I can’t believe we’re actually taking it with us.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Shepard says, as if he brings home gargantuan farm vegetables every day. He clambers into the truck and pulls out a series of bungee cords. (You can’t say the man’s not prepared.) “Gimme a hand,” he says to Simon, who obligingly flaps into the air and slings the cords over the giant corn.

Penelope’s watching this happen with a look of mild dread. “Seriously, what are we going to do with this thing?”

“Eat it?” Simon says, as if it should be obvious. He’s almost gleeful. “Make _giant popcorn?”_

“It was a goblin– thing– like, half an hour ago!” Penny protests. “It had legs!”

Simon shrugs, unperturbed. “You eat things that had legs all the time. You eat the _legs_ of things.”

“Still,” she says, peering at the kernels—they’re bigger than her face—“this can’t be ethical. It must violate some magickal creatures treatise.”

“It doesn’t,” I supply. “Technically, it’s currently a non-sentient object.”

“Yeah, after we _killed it,”_ she argues.

“And thanks to Baz’s super strength, now we get a free dinner, too!” Simon says cheerfully.

“It’s not _super strength—”_

“Is too.”

Shepard is waiting with the driver’s side door of his truck swung open, arms crossed. “Y’all want to go? Or are we just gonna stand here and wait for more corn to attack us?”

We hop into the truck. Simon pulls his wings back into his body, wherever they go, and we collapse into the backseat. Shepard gets a phone call just as he revs up the engine.

“Yello? Hey Mom. We’re heading back now… No, not really, unless you count corn goblins… Yeah, they’re like corn with little faces, but it’s fine, they’re all dead now.” He looks back and shoots us a thumbs-up. I roll my eyes. 

“I mean it was just a little delay,” he continues. “No, I can’t _promise_ that we didn’t almost die, but— Ma! Okay wait wait wait.” Shepard lays his elbow on the wheel, honking the horn by accident. “I have a surprise for you. No really.” He smiles roguishly. “Fire up the grill, will you?”

**🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽**

**Shepard**

Michele is not happy with us.

We’re frozen in the entryway sheepishly as she takes in our appearances, which are, to be frank, awful. Simon looks like a devil who lost a fight with a rabid cat, Baz looks like Dracula’s drunkard uncle’s illegitimate lovechild with a hag, and Penny and I look like… well, like farmers whose corn came to life and tried to eat them. Which is pretty much exactly what happened.

Mom has her hands on her hips and her disappointed face on. “What on God’s green earth—” She looks from me to the rest of the gang, and back to me. “Do I even want to know?”

I raise my hands in surrender. “We’ll explain everything. _After_ we shower. Also, there’s a really big cob of corn in my truck.”

_“What?”_

We scurry upstairs before she can ask more questions. I yank everyone into my room before they can actually go shower and close the door. “Okay. Debrief time.”

“What do we need to debrief?” Penny cries. “You already told your mum everything.”

I wave my hand. “She knows what I get up to. She’s probably just relieved that everyone’s alive and I brought home actual corn and not another werewolf.”

“You’ve brought home a werewolf?! Like, _brought home?”_

“You can’t judge me,” I say, pointing at Baz, “you brought home a vampire!”

“I didn’t… Bring him round for dinner and introduce him to my mother!”

“You introduced him to _my_ mother.”

Baz looks offended. “I’ve had dinner at your place,” he tells Penny. _“And_ met your mother. But for the record, I agree with you. On the scale of magickal creatures, you can’t equate vampires and werewolves. They’re nothing like Remus Lupin in real life.”

“I saved Agatha from a werewolf once,” Simon notes, casually.

I put my head in my hands. “This is besides the point. Also, I’d like to remind you all that this house is a judgement free zone.”

Penny raises a judgmental eyebrow. (If we had judgement wards, she wouldn’t make it past.)

“We just,” I explain, “have to keep the whole… giant goblin thing on the DL.”

“And _where,_ pray tell, would we have found a gargantuan ear of pre-husked corn?” Baz asks. 

“On that note,” Simon adds, “I can’t believe no one noticed the corn as we drove back.”

“Why would anyone pay attention to corn?” I ask. 

The stuff’s everywhere. We live and breathe corn here. And Normals ignore much stranger things…

“Giant corn,” he says.

“It’s Nebraska,” I say, like that explains everything, which honestly, it does. “Anyway. Please don’t tell my mom that the corn used to be alive. That’s all.”

“Can someone explain why corn was even attacking us?” Simon asks.

Penny folds her arms. “We’ll need a whiteboard. Do you have a whiteboard?” she asks me.

“Um. I think my mom has a chalkboard…”

“Perfect,” she says, nodding swiftly. “Team meeting.”

 _“After_ we eat,” Simon insists.

“Fine. Now get out of here, you two.”

Simon and Baz exchange a glance. “Aren’t you showering in… there?” Simon asks, pointing to the room they’re sharing.

She glares at him, as if he should know better. (Even I can guess at what’s happening.) “I said what I said.”

Baz smirks. Simon winks. They leave.

Penny’s hair has escaped her bun and is so big that it looks like a frizzy lion’s mane around her head. Her knee socks are completely gone, but her shoes are still intact, and at some point she tied up her dress for easy running. She looks ridiculous. She looks beautiful.

She pounces on me the second they close the door, knocking us onto my bed. 

Penelope Bunce is a fantastic kisser. She’s good at everything else, so I don’t know why I’m surprised.

We kiss and kiss and kiss until Simon and Baz rap on the door, telling us they’re ready, and we burst out laughing, realizing we forgot to shower completely.

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

**Simon**

We’re making giant grilled corn with mounds of butter.

So if you ask me, the day has shaped up to be awesome anyway.

Shepard hands me an honest-to-magic axe and I get to hack away at the huge corn. It makes Baz stare at my forearms and go all shy, so I think it’s a win-win. I swing the axe up and bring it down tremendously on a chunk of corn, sending bits of kernels flying everywhere.

The kernels themselves are as big as dinner plates. Shepard is prying them off with a shovel and placing them directly on the grill, which can probably fit four of them, max. The smell is mouthwatering.

“Like what you see, Pitch?” I call back to Baz. I heft the axe again and flex a little for good measure.

He rolls his eyes, but he drained three squirrels from Shep’s backyard before dinner; his flush gives him away. 

“... Somehow I don’t believe you,” Michele is saying as she helps Shepard tend the grill. “But at least you’re all in one piece—sort of.”

“I should probably tell Farmer McGobin.”

Penny throws her hands up in exasperation. “Does that name _not_ sound suspicious to you?!”

I’m sweating with the effort of hacking at the corn, and I think it’s just making things worse. (For the corn.) (It’s making Baz all hot and bothered, which is the best.) I throw down the axe, push my hair away from my face, and send a grin his way.

He’s on me in an instant. He shoves me against the giant corn cob and kisses me. “You look like a lumberjack,” he murmurs.

I frown at him, glancing at the soft red flannel Shepard lent me. “And you’re… into that?”

“I…” He opens his mouth, then closes it. “I don’t know. I’m into _you.”_

“You do like it!” I accuse. I smooth out the flannel and clear my throat. “I’ll chop your wood anytime you like, babe—”

Baz pushes me into the corn again, and I laugh, stumbling. “Never say that again.” 

“No promises.”

The air is full of barbecue smoke, melted butter, whatever magic spices Michele is putting on the corn. Fireflies twinkle in the trees; shifting winds make the woods whisper. The backyard is strung with little round lights, and they sway in the breeze.

This place feels a bit wild and unpredictable, like America. But it also feels safe, hidden. Like Shepard’s little judgement-free bubble. And imagine growing up here.

“You were amazing today,” Baz says. He’s holding my shoulders, bracketing me in. His eyes glow in the warm light. When he looks at me like that…

I’d never wish to have grown up anywhere else but at Watford, with Baz.

“I felt like I had… a little of my old confidence back,” I tell him. “I think I was spoiling for a fight, honestly.”

“You were,” he says. “You did. And Crowley, it was hot.”

“I just can’t believe we fought giant corn,” I say, and he laughs. “I mean really! Out of all the things that could be thrown our way, after everything– _this?”_

“You Chosen Ones and your hero complexes,” Baz says airily.

“Are there multiple Chosen Ones I wasn’t aware of?”

“Just you, Simon Snow.” He smirks. “Saviour of the World of Omaha, Hero of Nebraskan Farms, #1 Corn Husker three years running—”

“Shut up,” I laugh.

He tugs at my lapels and kisses me again. He tastes like butter and dead corn goblin. 

It’s not a bad combination.

  
  
🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽  
  



End file.
